David Smith

For 45 years, across more than 50 countries to date, David A. Smith has been a regional, national, and now global leader and innovator in affordable housing finance, transaction structuring, program design, and policy – and a passionate and effective teacher of affordable housing as a sustainable business.

He has twice founded companies, a cutting-edge for-profit boutique US consultancy (Recap Advisors), and the Affordable Housing Institute, a global thought and practice leader funded by the World Bank, USAID, Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, South Africa Banking Association, and others. AHI was a moving spirit behind, and via its impact fund a founding investor in, India’s SEWA Grih Rin, a pro-poor women-centric housing finance company that makes home-centric loans to informally employed or informally housed urban Indian women and families. In 6 years, SGR has grown 15x, made 10,000+ loans (94% to India’s two lowest income categories) with an NPL below 1.0%, expanded to 7 Indian states, and helped 35,000+ of the poorest Indians reach for better lives.

Among his activities and accomplishments are:

International financing expertise. Key initiatives or strategies in Turkey, Egypt, India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey, and the UK.

US policy and program innovation. Pro-bono advisor to the US Senate Housing subcommittee on its 1996 mark-to-market program that resulted in restructuring of $10+ billion in FHA-insured loans.

Executive education: curriculum, syllabus, teaching. Mexico, Saudi Arabia, US.

Brainstorming facilitation. South Africa’s Financial Sector Charter (2003). Rockefeller Bellagio Housing Conference (2005). Mexico City, Universidad Ibero-America on urban land irresolution (2009). Istanbul, Boğaziçi University, urban formalization and disaster risk mitigation (2010). Dubai, Mohammad Bin Rashid Housing Establishment (2012). New York, Morgan Stanley/ Ford, New Impact Capital Convening (2018).

Author. 400+ published articles in industry and professional publications, plus several books. Widely read monthly affordable housing column, The Guru Is In.

Speaker. More than 150 conferences, including Boulder Institute of Microfinance, World Urban Forum, World Bank’s Global Housing Finance Summit (multiple occasions), and multiple US state housing conferences.

A 1975 Harvard College graduate (AB Applied Mathematics), he considers himself an alumnus of the Yogi Berra School of Management: “You can observe a lot just by watching.”